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Good Mourning

This morning Harper’s Bazaar reported that the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s newest Costume Institute exhibit will be Death Becomes Her: A Century of Mourning Attire. It will showcase a history of bereavement costumes, both in cinema and in real life, through this decade and the last. Just in time for Halloween, this is the first Fall exhibit for the Costume Institute in 7 years. Looking through the photos it is fascinating to see how elaborate and ornate some outfits were. Women didn’t revert to simpler outfits during tragedy, rather they used clothes to show respect for the departed.

It’s all very macabre, I realize, but also made me think of how style is truly just an outward expression of what’s going on inside. And given last night’s devastating news of the loss of fashion legend, Oscar De La Renta, it seems fitting to acknowledge the link between fashion and death to put everything into perspective.